So ive always wondered about magic alex? Who really was he and how did he get involved with the Beatles circle??
“…And then I brought in Magic Alex, and it just went from bad to worse.”
Yanni (later John) Alexis Mardas, known in Beatles circles as Magic Alex, was born in Athens, Greece on the 2nd May 1942. He came to the UK in 1965 to exhibit his Kinetic Light Sculptures at the Indica Gallery, (which was one of Paul’s pet projects). He found work as a TV repair man and was living with John Dunbar, co-founder of the Indica. John Dunbar introduced him to Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones and Alex, along with John Dunbar, worked on a “psychedelic light box” for the Stones 1967 European Tour.
Brian Jones later introduced Alex to John Lennon. John was immediately taken and impressed with Alex’s Nothing Box, a small plastic box with flashing LED lights on it that John liked to watch while tripping on LSD. John introduced him to the other Beatles, declaring him to be his “new guru” and “Science Guru” and giving him the nickname, Magic Alex.
In September 1967 the Beatles set up a new company for Magic Alex, called Fiftyshapes Ltd for him to develop new and exciting ‘inventions’ he’d ‘promised’ the Beatles. This later evolved into Apple Electronics, with Magic Alex as it’s head. The Beatles also helped him obtain a British Visa so he could work for them.
At the start of Apple, Magic Alex was paid £40 a week, plus 10% of any profit his inventions made. This later rose to £6000 a year.
So far, so good, but when you start to look at Magic Alex’s promised inventions, the wheels start to come off somewhat. His list of plans and patents include (allegedly)…
A telephone that responded to its owner’s voice and could identify who was calling (One of his more realistic ideas - we sort of have this now in the form of caller ID.)
A force field that would surround the Beatles’ homes, surrounding them with coloured air so no one could see inside.*
A force field of compressed air to go around the Beatles’ cars, so no one could drive into them.*
A force field around Ringo’s drums which would isolate the drums sound from the rest of the microphones in a studio.*
A house which could hover in the air, suspended by an invisible beam.*
An X-ray camera that could see through walls.*
Paint that would make anything invisible.*
Car paint that would change colour by flicking a switch.
Electrical paint that could be plugged into a wall and would light up the room.* “Magic Alex invented electrical paint. You paint your living room, plug it in, and the walls light up! We saw small pieces of metal as samples, but then we realised you’d have to put steel sheets on your living-room wall and paint them.“ - Ringo, Anthology
An artificial sun which would hang inside the Beatles Apple Boutique on Baker Street, London and light up the sky (at nighttime) for the boutiques gala opening.*§
Wallpaper speakers which would actually be a part of the wallpaper. The wallpaper would plug into a stereo system and become a loud speaker.*
A flying saucer for which Alex requested the V-12 engines from John’s Rolls-Royce and George’s Ferrari Berlinetta car.*
A 72 track tape recorder (at a time when 4 or 8 tracks were more the norm).**
* In a 2010 statement to the New York Times, (strangely) Magic Alex denied knowledge of these plans and ideas, saying “I have never promised, nor discussed, let alone tried to invent any of the following…”
§ Despite denying this idea in his 2010 statement, Magic Alex was commissioned at great expense, to come up with an ‘artificial sun’ which could ‘light up the night sky’ for Apple Boutique’s opening night. However as the opening night approached, Magic Alex claimed there was not a strong enough energy supply to power his artificial sun, and the Beatles accepted this explanation.
** Magic Alex gave the Beatles regular updates on the progress of his studio for them. However, when it came to the Get Back sessions and they needed to use it, they discovered it was unusable. The 72 track had been reduced to 16 tracks. There was no soundproofing, no talkback (intercom) system, and no ‘patch bay’ to run the wiring between the control room and the 16 speakers that made up the 16-track recorder, which Magic Alex had fixed to the walls. The only piece of equipment he had provided was a crude mixing desk. It was scrapped after one session, with George saying:
“But he didn’t do anything (except he made a toilet with a radio in it, or something). When we finally got him to make a recording studio, we walked in and it was chaos. It was the biggest disaster of all time. He was walking round with a white coat on like some sort of chemist, but didn’t have a clue what he was doing. It was a sixteen-track system, and he had sixteen little speakers all around the walls. You only need two speakers for stereo sound. It was awful. The whole thing was a disaster and had to be ripped out.”
Alex later denied responsibility for this, saying he was in the Apple Electronics lab while the equipment was being built.
A lot of these ideas seem ridiculous and the Beatles naive for believing they were possible. Paul explained it as, “Well, if you [Magic Alex] could do that, we’d like one". It was always, ‘We’d like one.’”
“He had an idea to stop people taping our records off the radio – you’d have to have a decoder to get the signal. And then we thought we could sell the time and put commercials on instead. We brought EMI and Capitol in from America to look at it, but they weren’t interested at all. God knows what else he invented. He had this one idea that we all should have our heads drilled. It’s called trepanning. Magic Alex said that if we had it done our inner third eye would be able to see, and we’d get cosmic instantly.”
“One invention he had was amazing, though. It was a small square of metal, like stainless steel, with two wires coming out of it to a flashlight battery. If you held the metal and connected the wires one way, it would very quickly become so hot you had to drop it. Then, if you reversed the wires, it got as cold as ice.
“Another invention consisted of a thin piece of metal with something on it like a thick enamel paint, and it too had wires coming out of it. When it was connected, it lit up in a bright luminous greeny-yellow colour. Alex said, ‘Imagine if that was the back end of the car and you’d just stepped on the brake.’ So that’s what I wanted him to do. The Ferrari was going to be rubbed down to the bare metal and Alex was going to apply the magic coating. We asked, ‘Can you do other colours too?’ – ‘Sure, whatever you want.’
“We decided he was going to connect a colour scheme for the whole body of the car. The back of the car would be red – but only when you stepped on the brake! The rest of the time the whole car would be connected to the revs on the gearbox – so the car would start off quite dull, and as you shifted through the gears it would become brighter. You could go down the A3 and the pass somebody and it would look like a flying saucer. (And that’s another thing: I was going to give him the V12 engine out of my Ferrari Berlinetta and John was going to give him his, and Alex reckoned that with those two engines he could make a flying saucer.)”
Magic Alex with John and Mal.
In case you haven’t caught it yet, Magic Alex was a fake and a fraud (in my opinion!) I’m not a fan of his. I think he was the first and possibly one of the worst hangers-on that the Beatles managed to acquire occasionally in the late 60s and onwards, taking advantage of their riches, influence, reflected glory and sometimes naivety. I think if Brian Epstein had still been around, he would have stopped the Beatles doing anything disastrously bad and giving Magic Alex money for inventions he plainly couldn’t come up with. Previously, they’d always employed from their own ‘circle’, friends and acquaintances from Liverpool (mostly) who they knew they could trust. They seemed paranoid about people conning or cheating them in the early days - that had plainly died by the latter half of the sixties.
Mad professor inventions aside, that wasn’t the only involvement Magic Alex had in the Beatles lives, and particularly John’s.
Firstly, in mid 1967 when the Beatles were taken with the idea of buying Greek island(s) for them to live on privately. They’d previously tried to do this in 1964 but had been unsuccessful. Magic Alex’s father was a major in the Greek secret police and he boasted that through him the Beatles would have access to Greek government connections, enabling them to speed the acquisition of an island, because many islands were subject to government restrictions. In July ‘67, the four Beatles plus Pattie and her younger sister Paula, Cynthia, Julian, Jane, Neil Aspinall and Alistair Taylor traveled to Greece to view the islands they were interested in purchasing. Upon arriving in Athens, they were met by a hoard of press and photographers which had been arranged by Magic Alex. In the end, the Beatles didn’t buy the island. The British government had restrictions on large amounts of money going out of the country at the time. By the time it had been approved, the Beatles had lost interest in buying the island.
The Beatles en route to Greece with Magic Alex (carrying Julian).
When the Beatles traveled to India in early 1968 to study meditation with the Maharishi, John invited Magic Alex along. The Maharishi posed a threat to Magic Alex. He didn’t like another individual having an influence over the Beatles and particularly John. He asked John why the Maharishi always had an accountant accompanying him. John told him the Beatles (or possibly just John and George) were considering donating a large amount of money to the Maharishi and possibly a slice of profits from the Beatles ventures, which would be deposited in the Maharishi’s Swiss bank account. When Magic Alex questioned the Maharishi about the money, he asked him to build a radio station for him.
Alcohol was not allowed in the ashram in India, but Magic Alex smuggled some in. Later, in a move that was retrospectively seen as Magic Alex trying (and succeeding) to remove the Maharishi from the Beatles lives, he went to John with a story about the Maharishi propositioning Mia Farrow who was also studying at the ashram, and having sex with an American woman who he also offered (banned) chicken to. As you’ll know, this resulted in the Beatles leaving the ashram. Cynthia later said she believed this was a lie, as have George and Paul, with George and Paul actually apologising to the Maharishi.
This was also something Magic Alex would deny happening. In his 2010 statement he said:
“In early 1968 I received a written note from Apple Corps that the Beatles, who were in India attending the Maharishi’s ashram in Rishikesh in the Himalayan foothills, wanted me to join them forthwith. The next day, I got on a plane and flew to India. When I arrived, John Lennon was there with his wife, Cynthia, George Harrison was there with his wife, Patti Boyd and there were other people from the pop music world, including Mike Love of the Beach Boys. Neither Paul McCartney nor Ringo Starr were there. Nor for that matter were Donovan, Mia Farrow or her sister Prudence. […] I have never met Mia Farrow.
“[…] I should also mention that no alcohol was permitted in the Ashram, let alone drugs, and, so far as I was aware, nobody consumed either of these.
“About three to four months*** after I had arrived at the retreat, we were attending a lecture given by the Maharishi. Also present was an American teacher, whose name I now know to have been Rosalyn Bonas. I remember the Maharishi saying that this lady had an “iceberg” in her brain and was unable to understand what he was saying. In the presence of everyone there, he told her that she should come to his villa after the lecture for private tuition.
“On the evening of the following day or the day after (I do not remember which) John Lennon and I were sitting outside John Lennon’s little house. The teacher came up to us and told us that the Maharishi had made sexual advances to her while she was in his villa. She also told us that, despite the fact we were all supposed to be strictly vegetarian, the Maharishi had offered her chicken to eat. […]
“During the next evening, John Lennon, George Harrison and I were curious and went to the window of the Maharishi’s villa at the time that the nurse [sic] was supposed to be there. We looked inside and saw that the Maharishi was trying to hug the teacher. Both of them were fully clothed.”
*** As the Beatles were only there for approximately 2 months, and only around another 2 - 3 weeks after Paul left, this is not accurate. Also Alex calls the woman a teacher in a couple of instances and then a nurse elsewhere.
Finally, Magic Alex’s involvement in John’s marriage break up and subsequent divorce. Magic Alex took Cynthia on holiday, along with Pattie and Jenny Boyd (who was Magic Alex’s flatmate at the time) and Donovan. When they returned home, they walked in on John and Yoko. Cynthia left with Jenny Boyd and Magic Alex and went back to their home. She got very drunk and Magic Alex tried to convince her to “run away” with him. Cynthia refused, vomited from the booze and went to bed. Later, Magic Alex tried to get into bed with her and she pushed him away.
She returned to John the next day and John behaved as if nothing had happened. Shortly after, he and Paul and Magic Alex went to New York to promote Apple and Cynthia went on holiday with her mother to Italy. During this holiday, Magic Alex was dispatched to find Cynthia and tell her John wanted a divorce.
“The mere fact that ‘Magic Alex’ arrived in Italy in the middle of the night without any prior knowledge of where I was staying made me extremely suspicious. I was being coerced into making it easy for Lennon and Yoko to accuse me of doing something that would make them not look so bad.”
I agree with Cynthia in this. I have a pet theory (of which I have no proof) that John and Magic Alex may have decided Alex could put the moves on Cynthia and if she went along with it then both he and Cynthia had cheated on each other and it wouldn’t be so bad. But good for Cynthia that she sent him packing.
John & Donovan acting as Best Man at Magic Alex’s wedding.
Eventually, it all came to an end for Magic Alex. When three of the Beatles contracted Allen Klein as their manager in 1969, one of the first things he did was close Apple Electronics and sack Magic Alex. Alex was said to be bitter about his sacking and this was probably the start of the end of his friendship with John. I can’t find the source now, but I’ve read Alex say the locks on his studios were changed and all the equipment removed. When he contacted John, John told him he would sort it out, but Magic Alex was subsequently made redundant. It was later estimated that his ideas and projects had cost the Beatles at least £300,000 (£4.5 million in 2015 pounds according to Wikipedia) and that of all the patents he’d applied for on behalf of the Beatles, all had been rejected mostly because the ideas were unoriginal and infringed others patents.
After the Beatles, Magic Alex became a security consultant working for very rich people and royalty, promising them bullet-proof cars (which were eventually discovered not to be as bullet proof as he’d led them to believe) and also spent a lot of time suing various publications who accused him of being a fake, a fraud and a con artist.
Magic Alex was discovered dead in his Athens apartment on 13th January 2017, although he was thought to have died a few days earlier. He had been suffering from pneumonia. Although as far as I know, John had cut ties with Magic Alex, Yoko posted a tribute to him on twitter on 16th January 2017, saying, “I feel very sad. “Magic Alex” Mardas was a good friend to both John and I. He was not just talented, he had a big heart. Love, Yoko.”
You can read Magic Alex’s statement quoted here, online here.
PS. Apologies for the late reply to your ask! Thanks!
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